MOSCOW: The ghost of the Kursk submarine disaster has come back to haunt President Vladimir Putin as he watches public support for his handling of the Chechen theatre siege threaten to unravel.

The sinking of the submarine two years ago was a sudden and finite tragedy. The president was on holiday in southern Russia and made the disastrous mistake of not taking immediate personal command of the rescue mission. He did not move quickly enough to try and save the sailors, opting to refuse foreign help and lie about the dishevelled state the Russian navy’s rescue equipment.

Once the sailors perished, he tried to throw money at the disaster. The offer of raising the submarine to permit a proper burial being too little, too late.

With the theatre crisis, Putin faced a bigger test. Some lessons had clearly been learned from the Kursk. Throughout the siege the president repeatedly said human life was considered sacred. He ordered his security services to protect the lives of the hostages above all, and made Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Federal Security Service, promise the gunmen that their lives would be saved if they released all the hostages unharmed.

He branded Arbi Barayev’s gang “international terrorists” in a bid to compare the incident to America’s ‘war on terror’ rather than the brutality and failures of his war on Chechnya. He met with his top advisers until late on the first evening, and spent his first night in the Kremlin flat, in a bid to show he grasped the severity of the incident.

After the siege ended, he was immediately on the scene, pictured congratulating his military men on a successful raid, and talking to victims in hospital. But beneath the new and human surface to his actions, the same apparent disregard for human sensitivities ran.

When the siege started, Putin had a choice of permitting serious talks with the hostage-takers and accepting their demands in whole or in part, or of going for military action.

He was much safer in the political short term by taking the second option. Public support for the war in Chechnya has been eroding but few Russians like to make concessions in the face of terrorism.

On many issues Russians like the concept of the “strong hand”. If Putin, who came to power on the strength of his firmness against Chechnya, had given in to the hostage-takers it could have destroyed his image.

However, despite the strong hand being employed Putin is still in trouble.

Not only was the highly dangerous gas used in the siege deployed clumsily, but also relatives were denied information about, or even access to, their loved ones.

He and his top advisers, who struggled so keenly to seem compassionate during and immediately after the siege, are facing accusations of a disregard for human life and emotion.

Putin may be able to save his political career — which the Kursk tragedy imperilled for months — if in the next few days he comes clean and repeats the apologetic tone he displayed on Saturday night.

But then he also has to choose the correct path over Chechnya.

Chechen officials suggested more drastic actions could follow. Separatist leader Aslan Maskhadov’s representative said he feared desperate radicals could even target nuclear facilities. Moscow was unrelenting.

On Sunday the Russian Foreign Ministry said Moscow might boycott a forthcoming EU summit in Copenhagen in protest at a World Chechen Congress being held in the same town next month.

Such bullish rhetoric will just create further obstacles to badly needed peace talks, analysts say.

Professor Kirill Kholodkhovsky, at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, said: “Moscow officials have levelled responsibility for the theatre tragedy at the Chechen separatist leader, Aslan Maskhadov. This means negotiations will not be opened in the near future. But Putin still has to face the question: what can be done with the war in Chechnya now it has come to a dead end? There is now no other way other than entering into negotiations. The quicker such a decision is taken, the better for Russia. The terrorist attack in Moscow has certainly strengthened the position of Moscow’s hawks, not only among the political elite, but the population as a whole. This will make finding a way out more difficult.”

Yet Putin is unlikely to order any kind of open intensification of military operations, now that the eyes of the world are back on Russia’s “forgotten” war.

Popular disapproval of renewed operations in Chechnya runs high at 60 per cent. Putin has repeatedly claimed the war is over and that only a few police actions against the rebels are going on.

Instead the Kremlin is likely to yield to hardliners and use last week’s incident as a mandate for more of the brutal “clean-up operations” in which troops sweep villages for men old enough to join rebel movements.

Russian security experts claimed mobile phone calls from the hostages were traced to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Putin has repeatedly branded Chechen rebels — and the theatre gunmen — as hardened “international criminals”, in a bid to render the Chechen separatist movement illegitimate. The western world cannot protest at atrocities in Chechnya if they are carried out in the name of the fight against Osama bin Laden and international “terror”, so the argument goes.

Twenty-four hours after the carnage in the theatre, regular reports were already emerging from Russian news agencies of yet more “anti-terrorist actions” in Chechnya. Tanks and platoons of conscripts may never roll in, but more blood will be drawn. As Russia begins to wreak its revenge on the battered province, the exhausted Chechen people can only pray that Moscow seeks to exact a brutal revenge on Chechen “bandits” alone, and then negotiates a swift, peaceful end to Chechnya’s endless troubles.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.